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The Self-Fulfilling Media Circus

Two blocks away from me, at Staples Center and LA Live, a few hundred people here, a few hundred there are milling around. It strikes me as a surprisingly small turnout on the final evening on which Michael Jackson fans will have unfettered access to the area prior to the memorial Tuesday morning — and reports indicate that there are supposed to be a million of them around.

One policeman I spoke to seemed to believe that most of them will move in after midnight. Color me skeptical. Color this event over-hyped.

Tonight the crowd seems outnumbered by the media. The rented portapotties and huge police presence seem out of place. Staples has had plenty of large crowds before, and this seems at the moment like overkill.

Yes, news reports indicate that hotels and flights have been booked more than usual for this time of year. But as for the crowd itself outside Staples and LA Live, they seem to be lookie-loos, not mourners. A few wear RIP MJ shirts or other memorabilia, but most seem to be taking in the moment because they have been told by the 24-hour news-cycle media that this is a rare moment in human history. Ordinary people Tuesday will watch the memorial, like the Super Bowl, not because they care but because they are told everyone is watching it.

That is a self-fufilling prophecy. That brings out people like me, curious to see what the fuss is, and to take cellphone pictures of other people taking pictures — as I’ve done below. Look closely at my first picture, of the sparse crowd shooting pictures of the large LA Live video screen as it displays pictures of Jackson. Again, this is not a historic throng of people, but rather a trickle of onlookers who have come because they have been convinced that they would witness history.

A few thoughts come to mind.

First of all, “It’s not that big a deal” is not a viable storyline for a reporter in this setting. You sound like a fuddy-duddy, and you risk getting fired. So you have to go along with the hype. And as Solomon Asch pointed out, groupthink makes that easy enough.

Also, I think of the many ideologically motivated people who complain that the media is ideologically biased against their cause. First, it seems that the MJ hysteria, driven by and for the media, reveals the media’s true bias — titillation, hype and trivia.

Second, it seems that the light crowds and tepid atmosphere outside Staples, along with most Americans’ irritation that the media coverage has gone overboard, show that there are limitations of the media’s ability to “convert” people even if they tried. Some people came to LA because they love MJ. But the relentless media coverage didn’t make many people love MJ more than they otherwise would have — in fact there is a backlash among those who’ve had more than enough.

Tomorrow, the crowds will be much larger than tonight (but much smaller than the recent Laker celebrations), and the media will find ways of capturing the crowds on camera in a way that make the moment seem more momentous than it is. (My hunch is that the number of mourners at Neverland was lower than the reporters stationed there wanted you to believe, which is why I only noticed close-ups of the mourners over the past dozen days. Let me know if you saw or heard differently.)

I also think of the Jackson family, especially the narcissistic father Joe. Much has been said about how Michael’s ambitions were shaped by a lack of love from his father. But we increasingly see genes as operative in behavior, and it’s possible Michael just inherited Joe’s congenital need for the spotlight. Since the 1984 Victory Tour, I’ve always felt that his father orchestrates everything in a manner that maximizes their public exposure. They take endless time pondering whether to hold MJ’s memorial at the LA Coliseum, in Neverland, in Staples, or simply to shoot him to the moon so that he can belong to the heavens. Nothing is left to the imagination, no mystique, no mystery. All hype is gratefully accepted, even from a character such as Al Sharpton.

Jermaine Jackson is said to now be Muslim, and MJ is said to have possibly taken on a Muslim faith himself. It should be noted that the Islamic value is on quickly and quietly sending the deceased off to their rest, without fanfare. This, you could say, is a very un-Islamic affair that we are witnessing. It reflects the ultimate collaboration of media whores such as Joe and Al Sharpton and a media that is looking for the latest thing to hype beyond recognition.

Well said. Your insistence that “titillation” is the media’s TRUE bias is somewhat nonsensical, however. The one predilection toward “sensation” does not cancel out the other tendency toward political bias; the truly thoughtful person might even be able to make a connection here. Left wing think is “cool and hip” (to use dated terms!) and media types seem to want more than anything to be cool and hip. Thus flows the sensationalism in the same general direction as the everyday bias/perspective.

Rob Asghar

>>Your insistence that “titillation” is the media’s TRUE bias is somewhat nonsensical, however. The one predilection toward “sensation” does not cancel out the other tendency toward political bias; the truly thoughtful person…<<
You're right. I wish I was "truly thoughtful" enough to believe that the media's obvious obsession with celebrities like MJ and Anna Nicole Smith is merely a minor sideshow to its insistence on getting you to marry another woman.

Diane Schrader

Hmmm. I can see where that came across as condescending. However, my point is not rebutted by your sarcasm. Nowhere in my comment is there a suggestion that the media has a “secret mission” to promote any particular liberal trend. The point was that its/their political tendency meshes with the sensationalism. Hollywood and Washington both have their celebrities, do they not? And the media tends to want to bed down with all of them.

CarterO

The Michael Jackson funeral was a star studded event, and several people took to the stage to make tribute to their fallen friend, including Stevie Wonder who performed two songs, one of which being I Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer. Since then, the web has been blowing up with searches for I Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer lyrics. Stevie Wonder never had a huge hit with the song, but it was a success for George Michael when he covered it, and it’s been a favorite of Wonder fans for quite some time. There’s no amount of cash today people would give to bring the King of Pop back, and I Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer is terribly appropriate.